


The Boy With No Name

by Azertyrobaz



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24093436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azertyrobaz/pseuds/Azertyrobaz
Summary: Musings of a father over his yet to be named 50 year old son.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Comments: 20
Kudos: 124





	The Boy With No Name

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely connected to my story 'Midnight', but not really, so you don't have to have read it. I will post an actual follow up to it one day, but in the meantime I wanted to write my own 'name the baby' story. I'm aware that we will soon learn his 'official' canon name, but until then, let's be creative and enjoy ourselves. :)
> 
> The title is taken from the band Travis' album of the same name.

_“What’s the child’s name?”_

Din was starting to get used to the question. At first, it was easy to answer. The kid was a foundling, and he didn’t know his name. He was too small to tell it to him if he had one. And he did guess he had a name, given his surprising age, which was one more reason that made him hesitate calling him anything permanent.

_“You are as its father.”_

Things had started to become more difficult, then. He had accepted the responsibility of being his guardian, and they now formed a clan. Family. _Allit_. But Din had also been given a mission – find the little one’s species and reunite him with them, if he could. _They_ should be the one who got to name him. Because what if he actually found his birth family and they already had a name for him? He couldn’t just change it, he didn’t have the right, _buir_ or not.

_“You’re just dragging your feet.”_

Yes, as always, Cara was right – although he’d never admit it to her face. Part of him was trying to delay the inevitable. But names mattered. Names had power. He feared that the kid would be taken away from him as soon as he decided on what to call him. It was superstition, he was well aware, but it still haunted his thoughts anytime he started listing possible epithets in his mind. Naming his son would be the ultimate acknowledgment. After that, there would be no going back – the child would be _his_. And he didn’t think he was ready for that, not just yet.

_“He is a Mandalorian. Mandalorians have names.”_

He couldn’t disagree with his tribe, either. And he’d started referring to the kid as his _ad’ika_ , after all. And speaking to him in Mando’a when he could. Did it make him a Mandalorian, though? Din would teach him everything he knew, but even if he lived to be a hundred and raised the boy as his own, he wasn’t blind – the child was special. He had powers he knew not. Should he burden him with a warrior’s name? Was that to be his destiny? Somehow, he didn’t think so.

_“Name him after someone who mattered to you.”_

This was sound advice. And it was tradition to name children after fallen brothers and sisters. Naming him after his _buir_ or his rescuer had been tempting. But the former evoked sadness and the fall of Mandalore while the latter had disappeared with the rest of Death Watch. This was too much history for such a small baby. And what of the child’s species? Did they have their own traditions? Was it bad luck for them to use the names of departed loved ones?

_“Din Djarin isn’t a Mandalorian name.”_

No, it wasn’t. Foundlings changed their names, sometimes. Taking on their _buire’s_ patronym. A different first name even, when they were very young. But he never had. His name was the only thing he had left from his home planet. Which was just one more argument in favor of waiting. Waiting to find the boy’s own planet. It had to be out there, he just had to find it. Or wait until the kid himself told him what his name was. He’d started repeating words, after all. He could make himself understood when he wanted to. But wouldn’t he have found a way already? This tiny creature who could somehow interfere with his dreams and thoughts?

_“It’s been a year, now. He deserves a name.”_

Deserving a name was an interesting concept. But the boy had indeed been in his care for a while. His life had been turned upside down in the meantime, in more ways than one. He’d lost his place in the guild then found it again. Believed his tribe to have been eradicated then been welcomed back with open arms by the survivors. Gained an archenemy who refused to die, a sister in Cara, and yes, a son. Did his son _deserve_ the best of him? Yes, he did. But what was it? What _more_ could he possibly offer him? He’d already vowed to protect him with his life – there was no higher sacrifice. And yet…

_“Are you afraid of letting him in?”_

…And yet he still refused to give him a part of his soul. Because he knew he’d take it with him when they had to part. No one had dared voice that question, though. No one but himself. When it was just him and the boy in the dead of night, chest to chest and nightmares slowly fleeing their troubled minds. Out of time moments that couldn’t be described in words but in sounds. The relieved sigh of a child when all was right with the world again in his father’s arms. The hitched breath of a man who didn’t think such trust could exist.

_“How much longer are you going to make him wait?”_

Was he being cruel? Was the child patiently waiting for him to make up his mind all this time? Would he have to wait another year? More? In the end, it had been an accident. A happy accident, he guessed, while he was cleaning the ship and came across an old book with a cracked, red lining. A particular shade of red which always evoked contradictory feelings inside him. Safety and death. Light and smoke. He’d found the book in an Outer Rim bazaar. The Toydarian who sold it to him admitted that he didn’t know where it came from, but Din knew that it belonged to his home world, and had probably been looted during the war.

Still, he bought it. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t read it – he recognized the written language as that of his ancestors. His gran had been the only one who still spoke the tongue in his family, but she’d died before… Before. His mother had taught him some words – he’d forgotten most of them – but never how to write it. So every time he travelled in the system, he’d visit the bazaar and the Toydarian. And on the third occasion, he found what he was looking for. A blue book, this time. A lot bigger. It was a dictionary, and he’d be able to use it to decipher the red book.

It was a slow, painstaking process, but his life aboard the Crest before the kid was full of empty moments, traveling from one bounty to the next. He still didn’t try to write the language and couldn’t hope to pronounce it well, but now he knew what the red book was about: myths and legends.

Mando’a had been a difficult language to learn. Not so much speaking it, but writing it. And yet with the memory of his own ancient heritage firmly set in his mind, and the wish to impress his elders who’d spoken Mando’a all their lives, he’d studied. Arduously. Late into the night sometimes, to the complaints of the other children and his _buir’s_ remonstrance the next day when he could barely hold a weapon straight.

Deciphering the red book was no different. Although this time he had no one to impress but himself. He could still remember the pride he had felt when a teacher had praised his penmanship. Turned out, even a foundling could be proficient in Mando’a. He’d thought about visiting his home planet again one day, see what was left of it. And perhaps find another teacher – one who could tell him how to speak and write the words his grandmother had used. But the years had slowly gone by, and he’d never done it. Even if he learned the language, the knowledge would stop there – he had no one to share it with, so it would be pointless to devote any time to it.

And then the boy had come into his life.

Sure, he’d teach him Basic and Mando’a first. But maybe it would be worth it to teach him more. And maybe he’d look for that teacher. _For him_. He was destined to outlive him by centuries – how many people would he be able to share his knowledge with in that timeframe? Dozens. More, perhaps. Enough to make the memory of his first family live on. He didn’t seem to be impeded by his three-fingered hands, after all. And the drawings he’d done with the Mando kids at the covert – now proudly displayed in the Crest, to Cara’s half-hidden bafflement – looked the same as any other two year old’s colorful squiggles. Surely, he could be taught how to write, then.

And so he’d opened the red book and the blue book again, and chosen a name.

_“What’s the child’s name?”_

He could answer the question, now. His son was called Naji Djarin. Telling it to the kid and making him understand that it was _his name_ was easier than anticipated. As though he had indeed been waiting for him to make up his mind. _You are Naji. You are my son._ Maybe he’d choose to uphold the Mandalorian’s creed when he was of age, maybe not. Maybe he’d find his home planet and species, maybe not. But through it all, he’d be Din Djarin’s son.

“ _What does it mean?”_

He chose to keep part of it to himself – after all, he didn’t know anyone else who spoke the ancient language, and that was his right. So to the people he trusted, he’d tell a half truth. Naji meant ‘survivor’. And that was enough, because the name fitted him perfectly. The kid had survived and kept on surviving. But in the quiet interludes, when it was just the boy and his father and nightmares to keep away, he’d open his heart a little and admit the rest of it. Naji also meant ‘saved’. Whether he’d saved the child or the other way around was a distinction that didn’t matter, because it was both.

**Author's Note:**

> I like the fact that 'Din' means 'faith/religion' in Arabic. So I have explored lists of Arabic names, like Naji: they are beautiful, and deserve to be used more, so this is my contribution.
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are warmly welcomed.


End file.
